From The Progressive: The Dalai Lama's Message to Wisconsin

By Rebecca Kemble

Posted on The Progressive May 21, 2013

Reprinted in part with permission

MADISON, WIS. -- Last week, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, addressed a joint session of the Wisconsin State Legislature. He spent four days in Madison visiting Deer Park Buddhist Center and Monastery and participating in the "Change Your Mind, Change The World" conference organized by two research centers at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

The Dalai Lama’s visit to the Wisconsin State Capitol began as a conversation over a year ago between Rep. Jeffrey Stone (R-Greendale) and Sherab Phunkyi, who works for the Assembly Sergeant-at-Arms. On January 10, 2012, Phunkyi was driving a van full of members of the Assembly Committee on Jobs 250 miles north of Madison to Hurley, Wis., to attend a hearing on a mining deregulation bill when Rep. Stone casually began asking him questions about the Dalai Lama.

When Phunkyi received news last year that the Dalai Lama planned to visit Madison in May, he remembered their conversations from the road trip and suggested to Rep. Stone, that the Legislature, through its leadership, might extend an invitation to His Holiness to address the body. Last winter Assembly Speaker Robin Vos made the formal request on behalf of the legislature and the Dalai Lama accepted....

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Photo of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama © and courtesy Rebecca Kemble. Reprinted with permission.

Editor's Note: To read the transcription of the Dalai Lama's May 14, 2013, speech to Wisconsin legislators, with a link to the video, see "His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s Address to the Wisconsin State Legislature," by Rebecca Kemble and Leslie Amsterdam, posted May 20, 2013, on Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative.